This is the MAIN REASON we don't discuss administrative issues in public:

Because moderators and admins are VOLUNTEERS here, which means their time is especially valuable to me. They willingly give and donate their time to help the community. Opening up admin decisions to the public would mean every decision would be analyzed, and in many cases, picked to death. Trust me, I tried this at one time, and it didn't work well. I, and the volunteers, spent 90% of our time explaining ourselves and actions in the admin forum from 3 or 4 people who had the biggest problem with things. Meanwhile, hundreds of other people suffered from the sheer focus on addressing and responding to those 3 or 4 same people, over and over again.

The second, slightly lesser reason but in my eyes, almost as important, is people's privacy. We take actions here and there and we keep most of them private because a lot of people (dare I say most?) don't like being called out publicly for some infraction they may have incurred. Since people's privacy here is a fairly large concern, I chose to err on the side of privacy when discussing admin issues as well. I have not regretted that choice once, because I've received thankful PMs for handling a situation with a simple PM rather than making a public note about it. Why not have both? Because people will notice when we don't post something to the admin board, and ask why we're censoring *that* discussion (when the people involved very well may want nothing about it made public). You can't have it both ways -- some people simply will not respect the boundaries.

Sometimes, I, as your host, can choose to suspend a guideline in order to discuss the *meta* issue about a guideline. We've done this in the past, and I will continue to do if it fosters healthy debate and discussion.

As for locking threads, I will just say this. If you don't believe and/or respect our reasons for locking threads here, then I suspect there's little I can say to change that. I never intended a thread to become "owned" by someone for all of eternity, to be here forever, to be added to forever. That is an oversight on my part for which I apologize, but because of that attitude, it sometimes contributes to our issues with what should be a fairly simple action (this thread is closed; if you want to continue the topic without the anger or arguments, do so in a new thread).

DocJohn